


One Yesterday

by fracturedmoonlight



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, M/M, Reincarnation, teacher!Eren, teacher!levi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-23 22:02:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2557286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fracturedmoonlight/pseuds/fracturedmoonlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[ on hiatus; probably will be rewritten in the summer months ]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Erp, this is my first fanfiction. Also, I'm the only one editing this thing, so please let me know if you catch any mistakes. The first chapter is background; the next will take place in the modern world. Reincarnation/AU fics give me several feels.
> 
> Please enjoy! :)

It's been two weeks. He sees Hanji eyeing him out of the corners of her eyes; she must think that her glances are hidden by the rims of her glasses. He doesn’t even waste the energy to glare back at her in response, doesn’t want to seem defensive, like he’s just hiding his hurt behind the façade of apathy he has perfected over the course of his thirty-seven years of life. At the same time, however, he has a hunch that his lack of contempt for her concern is what gives him away.

He’s numb, but it’s not much different than how he felt before. He’s spent so many years bottling up the things that could make him look weak to others that, at some point, he found those emotions feeling foreign. Often, he would find himself playing some sort of twisted game, attempting to match normal human reactions with their corresponding situations; _oh, that woman over there fell down and is crying, do I go help her for moral reasons, or do I leave her be to teach her the cruelty of this world?_

Somewhere along the way, he had begun to wonder if one day he would wake up and it would feel normal to have a whole range of functioning emotions, like they’d never left him in the first place. Happiness. Excitement. Envy. Greed.

(Despair.)

But, now that day is sure to never come. It slipped away the moment he drove his sword—literally—into the metaphorical last hope for humanity.

(Or was it when he brushed burnt eyelids closed over unseeing blue-green eyes?)

(They were so dull, it made him wonder if he had simply imagined their vibrancy all along.)

A sharp pain shoots through his right hand, and the paperwork he is holding slips from his grasp, floating down onto the wooden floorboards in all different directions.

“Ah,” he murmurs, clenching and unclenching the fingers of his right hand. Hanji rushes to sweep up the papers, not speaking a word.

 _Ah_ , he thinks. _So, she does know_.

“Thanks.” He says listlessly, as she hands him his stack of papers—general fieldwork assessments for new recruits. The Scouting Legion’s name has taken on a more positive connotation in the last week: it has become a group of young men and women assembled to scout out new territories, to explore the vast world that lies beyond the walls of a city formerly hidden.

Now, they get more recruits than they seem to know what to do with; an ironic contrast to the previous struggle to recruit young folk to ride directly into what was almost certainly a dangerous and gruesome death.

Levi does not leave the walls, which are scheduled to be fully demolished in two years’ time. He does not want to relive That Day. He does not need to be physically reminded of the cool lick of ocean waves, or the pull of the tides that drew Eren’s body (wrapped in his own blood-stained cloak) toward the horizon.

No, Levi watches new recruits do simple tasks: ride their horses, hunt, and demonstrate an overall ability to survive. He checks some boxes, files some papers, and calls out names. Then, he meanders back into his office and sits with his chin in his hands, staring at the spots on the wall where the old, lighter paint peeks through the fresh coat they put on a few months ago. Hanji usually comes in and tries to get him to eat lunch with her, but he’s not great company anymore, and he never has much of an appetite beyond unsweetened tea. His crude and endearing sense of humor is gone, replaced by breathy sighs and the clenching and unclenching of his right hand.

(“I can’t find anything wrong with it—the nerves are okay and the ligaments don’t _feel_ torn—but it’s not like you’ll let me cut you open and check, ha!” Hanji had said when he had asked her to examine it. She had glanced at him nervously, though, and it was a mark of their deep friendship that she was unwilling to tell him directly that there was absolutely nothing wrong with him; Unwilling to tell him that it was a mental block, an inability to forgive himself for driving his sword into innocent flesh.)

“Levi.” Her tone surprises him. It is serious, firm.

He’s looking at the papers now, reading personal data with little interest. The stats of one new recruit catch his eye.

Hair: brown; Eyes: green. He’s 5’4” though, and the ink scrawled across the page indicates that he’s a bit of a coward.

 _What a shame_ , Levi thinks with a small frown.

“You didn’t at the funeral, and I know that you were trying to be strong for everyone, but…it’s okay. To, you know…” He sees her feet shift from the corner of his eye, a sign of her discomfort.

“I _don’t_ know.” He says coolly, lifting his grey eyes to meet hers. “Please, enlighten me.”

Her mouth twists downward in a frown that rivals his own. “ _Levi_ , it’s okay to miss him. You’re allowed to grieve your friend.”

Inwardly, he freezes up. He isn’t the type to get angry when something displeases him, and he certainly isn’t one to let it show—even to his comrades.

“He was my subordinate, and a fine soldier. However, I barely knew enough about him to ever consider him a _friend_.”

 _And that’s the last thing I would call someone designated to kill me when the time comes, that’s for sure_ , he thinks sarcastically.

He grimaces when an unwanted memory floats into the back of his mind.

_Do you resent me, Eren?_

Hanji looks like she is about to scold him, but he watches her bite her lip (hard, by the looks of it) and sigh in exasperation instead.

“Well, don’t forget that meeting we have later. I know they’re downplaying it, but it seems like it might be rather important, judging by a cursory glance at the guest list,” she says seriously, and he swears he sees something akin to trepidation in the way her face twists at the word “important.” Almost immediately, a grin is back in place on her face, and she is wiggling her fingers at him in a strange, very Hanji form of goodbye.

“Well, I have to go make my rounds and ensure that none of the new recruits are hanging each other from trees by their underwear. Seeya later, Commander!”

“Don’t call me that,” he growls in response, but she is already halfway down the hall, laughing voraciously in time with her bouncing step.

She knows why it bothers him, he’s sure, but he assumes that she thinks making it into a joke will make it hurt less. Instead, it is a terrible reminder of the friend and mentor he watched snap in two during the latter half of that final, decisive battle.

He shakes his head, sighing and running a hand through his hair.

It is times like these Eren’s last words linger in his ear, almost inciting him to take action in a terrible way.

_“Next time, for sure. Next time. I’ll tell you…next time. Remind me, okay? To tell you. Next time.”_

He had been babbling, Levi was sure. His death hadn’t been a slow one; it was long, and Levi was sure it was painful judging by the way his sword cut all the way through his vital organs. It was the curse of the titan-shifter that his body was attempting to heal him even as his spirit left him.

He had sat there, clutching the younger man’s body, certain that a look of pure terror had been painted on his face—whether it was in response his own actions, or the young man’s broken form, he still wasn’t sure.

_“Because…I couldn’t this time. Too…hard. Not…timing. The timing was…urgh. The timing would have been…real…shitty.”_

His mouth had been so dry, he hadn’t been able to speak, even as Eren had laughed a little pitifully, coughing up blood onto his cloak.

_“Ugh, shit. Sorry.”_

Why the fuck had he wasted energy apologizing when it was already soaked in red? What the fuck was funny about dying? Some small part of him had wanted to kick Eren, to tell him that he should _at the very least_ take _dying_ a little seriously.

Why hadn’t Eren been angry?

He’d just fucking _murdered the kid_ , after all.

But Eren hadn’t even mentioned it.

_“You have to…keep…going. Mikasa…protect Mikasa…Armin…But next time…okay?”_

He hadn’t answered, even as he felt Eren’s hand search for his own. His eyes had lost luster; at that point, Levi was sure Eren couldn’t even see him anymore. He was looking past him, perhaps being beckoned to whatever afterlife awaited him (or didn’t, who knows?).

No, even as Eren found his hand and grasped it (tight, way tighter than he would have thought possible under the circumstances), he hadn’t said one word. He had stayed completely still, staring at the grotesque figure beneath him.

“Why couldn’t I have just fucking humored the kid?” he murmurs angrily, his head dropping into his hands. “Would it have fucking killed me to just _say something_?”

What had made it so different from the time he was called over by Petra to comfort the fallen soldier on those cobblestone streets, before he even knew the damn kid? Sure, it was depressing, it was soul-crushing, it was _unfair_ to watch someone innocent die. But he had grasped that man’s hand anyway, blood and all, and tried to convince him that _he had mattered_. Why couldn’t he have done the same for Eren, a kid that had, in the grand scheme of things, mattered _the most_?

\---

Soon, an hour has passed, and then another. He grimaces at the out-of-tune twang of the church bells; they are so cracked that now they seemed to ring a half-step below what they were supposed to, lending them an eerie tone that seems more foreboding than divine or comforting.

He grabs the paperwork he hadn’t bothered to finish and shoves it into a shoulder-bag. Feeling around his pant pocket, he takes out a key and locks his office, listening for a decisive click.

He figures the meeting is just another “What do we do now that the titans are all gone?” discussion, since they haven’t really had another formal one since the day after the final battle. It had been agreed that Levi would be promoted, that the Military Police would need to step up their game now that humans were the only real threat to humanity, and that the Scouting Legion’s goals needed to be completely reevaluated. Beyond that, they had been too physically and mentally exhausted to go into the logistics of it all.

It takes him half an hour to walk to the old building they are set to meet in. He wonders why they aren’t just meeting in the compound, but he figures the nobility have no desire to intermix with the soldiers if they can help it.

 _Assholes_ , Levi thinks.

A Military Police officer is standing at the grandiose entrance to the old building (maybe it had been a venue of some sort before, a concert hall or a ballroom, judging by the lacquered door and the large golden handles).

The officer looks nervous when he sees him, but Levi chalks it up to his reputation. Between slaying titans and being a generally disagreeable human being, he isn’t too surprised at the officer’s reaction. He is also fairly certain that, as a general rule, all Military Police officers are cowards.

Levi takes his time looking the Military Police officer over, inwardly reveling in the way the lanky blonde boy shakes and shifts his brown eyes to the right and left instead of meeting Levi’s gaze.

“Commander Ackerman, here with an invitation to the ball,” Levi drawls, removing a folded piece of paper from his pocket and waving it in the officer’s face.

“O-of course, Commander. Go right in,” the boy says, practically skipping over to the door to open it for him.

“Thanks,” Levi says sarcastically, stepping inside.

The inside of the building is grandiose, all red velvet-lined walls and black and white marbled flooring. It is odd to see such decadence in the wake of destruction. Strange statues of cool white stone line the parallel walls, and Levi makes his way up the grandiose staircase with a sneer on his face.

With every step, he grows more irritated that some people were able to hide away in such a place while others lost their lives in the nightmarish world that had been inhabited by the titans.

He finally finds himself in front of even more extravagant doors, and pushes them open without hesitation.

In retrospect, he probably should have seen it coming.

He knows the moment he sees Hanji’s eyes flick toward his own. There is something pleading in them, the same look he saw when he had swooped down to save her from the mouth of a particularly persistent titan who had already gotten one of her feet.

He had never heard her so terrified, so furious with him for coming anyway, despite her howling for him to run in the opposite direction.

Then, he sees the chains tying her and other members of the Scouting Legion to their chairs. He sees the malicious grins of the Military Police and the other nobles sitting pompously on their cushioned armchairs, smirking triumphantly in his direction.

This wasn’t a meeting; it was an execution. A clean start for the Scouting Legion established through the ousting of the old command.

The recruit manning the front of the hall comes through the door and announces with a sneer that “Commander Levi was the last one, sir.” Levi flicks out a blade and slices his throat so fast the boy—he couldn’t have been more than sixteen, really—doesn’t even have time to react with shock or terror.

After that, it happens so fast he doesn’t process most of it.

The Military Police grab their guns, and he sees Hanji slice a few before they have a chance to shoot. He realizes that she must have figured out a way to break loose of the chains before Levi had even arrived. Some of the members of the Scouting Legion are slaughtered before they have a chance to escape, and he takes out a few Military Police in return. Hanji is able to free a few more, all the while screaming at him.

“Run, Levi, go back to command, get help!” she shrieks, as a few officers grab her and put their swords to her throat.

Against his desire to save her, against the pain of knowing he is going to lose another friend—probably the only one he has left—he heeds her advice, and makes for the door. He needs to be alive to try and stop this, and there’s no way staying in that room is going to help his cause.

As he runs down the stairs, he sees a familiar form in a red scarf fending off four men.

Mikasa Ackerman has her wrists clamped together behind her, stuck between the grubby hands of an overweight officer. The other three men are wearing feral grins; one clutches a knife. One of them is clutching their surely bleeding hand with a grimace. She must have taken off a few fingers while they were attempting to hold her.

“Ackerman!” he barks, and takes out his knife. He easily frees her from the grip of the man holding her. Once she is free, she makes an animalistic noise and twists the knife out of one of the man’s hands. She sinks it into his skin over and over, while Levi takes care of the others. Within moments, they are on the floor.

 _That amount of blood will probably stain that marbled floor forever_ , Levi notes with a strange sense of delight.

Mikasa Ackerman collapses to her knees, and Levi stares as she begins to hyperventilate.

“How…we _saved them_ …and you. _If Eren were here_ …!” she bites out at him, turning to him sharply with eyes full of fury.

He just looks down at her. It’s the same as it was with Eren; there are no words he can speak to justify all that has happened, no words of comfort to her. He knows it’s wrong, it’s all so wrong.

“Armin…he didn’t come…I need to go back and find Armin,” she sobs brokenly, burying her face in her scarf.

Suddenly, he sees the group of men who had been holding Hanji, backed up by a number of officers, charging down the stairs.

They might have been able to take on a group of four, but Levi knows that, without more than a pocket knife, he won’t be able to manage the large group rushing toward them.

He swallows, his mouth suddenly dry.

How fitting. To die at the hands of humans, and not the monsters he had spent his whole life slaying.

He turns to the girl on the ground, clutching her scarf uselessly.

“This is my atonement, Ackerman. Go find your friend, and _get the hell out of here_ ,” he says firmly. “That is a fucking _order_.”

“Commander—” she looks up to him in shock, then at the men coming toward them. Her breath hitches, and her eyes look like those of a doe about to be shot for a hunter’s meal.

“Don’t waste any more time, shitty brat!” He barks, and for a short second he swears he _feels_ something.

Letting a small smirk make its way onto his face, his eyes meet the girls’ own. Tears are streaming down her face. Without a word, she nods firmly, stands up in a fluid motion, and takes off out the front door.

Wielding his blades, he turns to face the Military Police as they close in.

“Hey, Eren. Life better not be so shitty this time,” he murmurs, narrowing his eyes.

\---

After that, he can't recall many details. He remembers making contact with a few, and then the feeling of cold steel being thrust through him.

As he fell, he didn’t see red.

He saw green.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was so heartwarming to see that people enjoyed the first chapter--thank you! To those who were hurt by the feels, don't worry. Once our other lovely main character rears his head, things will get warm and fuzzy, I promise.
> 
> On that note, please bear with me until the next chapter, when we'll finally meet Eren (and catch up with the summary of this work, hurhur. For now, please enjoy some delicious Levi summary.

The first thing he sees is blue—the sparkling blue of a winding expanse of water. Years later, he will tell inquiring minds at his parents’ cocktail parties that he doesn’t know what happened to him before that day in Hyde Park. He chalks it up to infantile amnesia, something he reads in a textbook at age twelve (it earns several hearty laughs, a few “Kids these days…!”).

Really, he had come to terms with the fact that some things cannot be explained long ago—back when he was Humanity’s Strongest, a David unsheathing dual blades in front of countless Goliaths.

The blue of the water is not his first memory; no, his first memories are of another time and space. There they are, all packed into the small head of a new, young body, as easy to access as it is to breathe.

He is found numbly walking a path along that expanse of water (The Serpentine, he learns later) by a woman with hair of spun gold. It is pinned back in haphazard curls by broaches of brushed silver. Her lips were stained a bright red, and he would have ignored her as she bent down to question him if she hadn’t had such bright green eyes.

(Too light, but green nonetheless.)

“Honey, are you lost?”

All around them, there is noise, but it is so different than that which surfaces in the far reaches of his mind that he hesitates to name it as such.

A couple to his left is sprawled on top of a floral picnic blanket; they giggle as they roll on top of one another, and the leaves beneath them crunch under their shared weight. A ways ahead of him, he listens to a little girl chat excitedly to the woman holding her hand. Her high-pitched voice is balanced by the warm timbre of the older woman’s laugh.

All of these sounds combine into one layer, and he finds that he wouldn’t mind this it accompanying the motions of his everyday life; it has a sort of music to it.

The blonde in front of him purses her lips and quirks her head to the side at his silence, regarding him as quietly as he regards the new world around him.

Slowly, he turns to stare back at her, grey eyes meeting hers with a fragile solemnity.

“Where…where are you from?” She asks him first, hesitating as he continues to stare ahead at her with a steady calm.

“I don’t remember,” he responds coolly.

(Not here, that’s for sure.)

“Your parents…”

“I don’t know.”

(There is no need to think about which lifetime he is referring to as he speaks; the answer remains the same for both.)

“Your name?” This time, there is a determination in her eyes and voice that tells him that she is taking him seriously.

For a brief moment, he thinks that she has seen through him completely—that she has noticed the old blood pulsing through his young veins.

“…Levi.”

\---

The woman had marched him straight to the nearest police officer with her stoic husband in tow (Levi looked at him, and he looked back, but no words were exchanged), and the three adults had walked him to a station. On the way, she explained to him that her name was Amelia Kurtz, and that she was an American; she had travelled with her husband, Markus, to London, England for a series of lectures on the history of the US-UK special relationship.

(Levi didn’t question the odd names of the places, her strange manner of speech, or the other countless oddities of this strange place; he took them in stride, thinking that he had seen far worse things than sparkling lakes and laughing people.)

When they got to the station, Levi didn’t show up in any system. He sat there patiently, listlessly watching the adults argue over how his record must have been lost, how this was “a very rare case, indeed,” how he would be taken to a caring home—

“Absolutely not,” Amelia had snapped, and she had grabbed his hand as the adults in the room looked at her in shock (all excluding her husband Markus, that is, who had looked a little bit amused; he still had yet to say a single word).

She did not let go until they were in a plane back to America, the adoption papers tucked neatly inside her expensive leather travel bag.

\---

He had never wasted time as Corporal Levi Ackerman wondering what his life would have been like had it not been ruled by man-eating giants. When a comfortable life is suddenly thrust upon him, he is utterly confused about what to do with this newfound freedom.

Leviathan Kurtz (“Levi doesn’t really suit you,” his mother had said to him as a child, before slapping an even more ridiculous name on him in its place; though he wasn’t necessarily a fan of it, he figured he owed this whimsical history professor and impromptu mother) is a dream Corporal Levi Ackerman would have scoffed at, before making some sort of shit joke and going on his merry way.

His adoptive parents dote on him, and they spend the first few weeks back in their classy Manhattan apartment attempting to pry him open with little success. Eventually, Markus tells his wife to stop looking at Levi like he is a case to be cracked and more like a growing boy. From that day forward, he receives no more questioning glances—only an unconditional love he is unsure how to react to.

(There’s no need for the vulgarity of his past life in this rose-colored present, so he left the shit jokes behind, replacing them with polite “thank-yous” and “yes, sirs/m’ams.”)

Levi grows up never deigning to thank his parents for every small thing they do for him, always savoring the smiles his mother shoots in his direction, being grateful for the times his father ruffles his hair affectionately, and feeling unbearably empty despite his incredible happiness.

\---

His teenage life is less stressful the second time around.

For one thing, it’s not spent on underground streets getting in knife fights and conducting shady business deals with fat assholes, but curled up in leather armchairs eating his mother’s freshly baked cranberry oatmeal cookies.

In his free time, he learns languages. He is fluent in German by the age of twelve, thanks to the lessons his parents pay for when he won’t shut up about needing to learn it. “The only thing you need to worry about is making friends,” his father had grumbled, but he had signed him up anyway.

(He thinks they are just surprised he has finally asked for something of them, and maybe a little bit pleased.)

After school, he spends his time reading texts he finds in the local public library about the psychology of dreams and the possibility of reincarnation. During springtime, he spends his afternoons sitting in Central Park; he is careful to always bring a blanket to sit on so his freshly-pressed private school uniform is not stained by the grass or dirt. In the wintertime, he holes up inside his family’s Park Avenue apartment with a hot cup of tea.

He takes up fencing in high school, mostly as a distraction from the fact that he’s never really fit in with other kids his age and had ended up with no real close friends. A scuffle with the hotshot of the team after Levi defeats him easily lands Levi with a rival and a trip to the principal’s office.

Not wanting to trouble his parents, he decides to try and weasel his way out of it in any possible way.

“Leviathan. What an interesting name,” the principal says. There is a note of humor in his voice, and the light brown eyes that stare back at him make Levi furrow his eyebrows, but he isn’t quite sure why. There is something familiar about the man, though he has never spoken to Principal Clark at length before. He’s only read a bunch of newspaper clippings about his progressive style and massive educational success.

“My parents are both history professors with terrible senses of humor. Sir.” He adds the last part as a sarcastic afterthought. He has little respect for this man with coiffed blonde hair. He definitely prefers his mother’s messy curls. This man gives off an air of perfection that reeks of deception.

At the same time, this deception and the mask the man wears is something Levi understands all too well. It’s not like he goes around talking about his memories of a world inhabited by monsters who chewed nonchalantly on the bodies of innocent men and women. Due to this, he is hesitant; there is something strange settling in his chest as he takes in the appearance and mannerisms of the man before him.

“Yes,” the man says, pausing to chuckle. “Just Levi suits you much better.”

Levi’s eyes narrow and he continues to scrutinize Principal Clark.

Suddenly, his heart is beating louder than the ticking on the antique clock hanging on the wall of the office. He tries to take a breath in, but suddenly, he tastes metal and smells something sickly sweet.

He looks down at his now shaking hands, and his world blurs.

This has only happened once before. He had fallen from his bike when he was ten, and he had broken his ankle. Suddenly, he had smelled the fresh scent of pine trees. A shot of adrenaline had shot through his body and his vision was overtaken by a horrifying image of a female giant in perfect clarity.

He had sat shaking, eyes wide and unblinking, while his mother had hysterically called 911. Yet, there was a determination in his chest that forced him to his feet, and he found himself walking on his broken ankle like he was a marionette, someone else pulling his strings and pushing him forth. His father had barked at him to sit down, and he heard, but he was powerless to heed his words.

The doctor had told his parents that he just had a panic attack due to the shock of being injured for the first time, and that it wasn’t uncommon for young children to “freak out the first time they get hurt, you know?”

He wondered how common it was for young children to have PTSD after having a flashback to a not-so-distant lifetime.

Now, he saw a man’s broken form lying on green earth stained burgundy. Despite the loss of a leg and the lack of an eyeball, the man was looking at him with a lazy grin.

“Levi, you are the proudest accomplishment of my entire career. Please carry the Survey Corps to victory in my honor,” the man had stated, his voice coarse but eerily even, as if he had practiced the line for that very occasion.

“Levi!”

Pulled back to the present by a concerned yelp, Levi found his world shifting into focus once more.

He realizes after a beat that he is sprawled on the ground, back flush against the plush green carpet of the office.

The florescent light above him burns, and his skin feels slick with sweat.

Slowly, he rolls his eyes to the right, focusing on the trash can sitting next to him on the floor. Crawling a few feet over to it, he grasps the edges and promptly empties the contents of his stomach.

 _Disgusting_ , he groans inwardly. The sick feeling doesn’t pass, however, and he finds himself shaking as he turns to assess the reaction of the man kneeling next to him.

Principal Clark is several feet away from him, as if he is trying to defend himself against Levi in case he chooses to react in a hostile manner. There is a great deal of guilt cooling the inherent warmth in his eyes.

“You could have fucking warned me, Erwin,” Levi grunts, taking a handkerchief out of his coat pocket to wipe at his mouth. “Now get me some water, you useless adult.”

There is something about Erwin’s laugh that makes him feel less nauseous.

\---

As it turns out, Erwin’s name in this world is not Erwin at all; it’s Eric. He has the same lucid dreams as Levi each night, little fragments of a lost world. Has the same strong gaze, but blue eyes are replaced by a warm brown.

Eric-not-Erwin had his first “memory freak-out” at age sixteen.

(Levi had raised an eyebrow at this terminology, but Erwin had explained that he had not been the most articulate of teenagers.)

He had grown up in Seattle, and he had been driving back into the city in the rain after a weekend spent with some friends in college upstate. On one of the winding roads home, a large deer had jumped in front of his SUV. Something about the deer’s eyes and the shadows of the forested road, coupled with the blurriness of his vision and his loss of control over the wheel, brought him back to the moment he lost his arm to a titan.

He had crashed into the tree at almost full speed, unable to process the fact that he was straddling two lives in that one, decisive moment.

“I’m still considered a medical miracle,” Erwin laughed proudly. “I only have the countless scars to show for it. Ironically enough, they thought I might lose my arm—the same one, too. Needless to say, medical science really is amazing these days.”

As Erwin had recounted the story, Levi just looked at him gravely. He didn’t understand how Erwin could laugh at the fact that he had almost died because of his memories of the past, but he decided to tread lightly on the matter for now. He figured that everyone had different methods of coping with tragedy, after all.

\---

Levi joins the student council and becomes president by his senior year. He works closely with Principal Clark to organize events for the school, and he slowly builds a following of devoted classmates (he freezes each time someone calls him “President Levi,” but never explains his discomfort).

When he graduates, he has many people he is happy to call his “friends.”

(He would be lying if he said that it wasn’t thanks to the principal formerly known as Erwin.)

When the man he once knew as Erwin Smith, Commander of the Survey Corps, and now knows as Principal Eric Clark, administrator extraordinaire, hands him his diploma, he quietly thanks him—not just for his help with the Student Council, but for dragging him into the light that day he forced him into the Survey Corps.

Erwin just grins toothily.

“Second chances are really amazing, aren’t they?”

\---

Levi takes off to California for college, much to his mother’s displeasure. She huffs and protests all the way to the airport, where she finally bursts into a blubbering mess. She tells him how proud she is of his hard work, how much she loves him, how she and her husband are the luckiest people in the world to have found such a perfect child wandering around London thirteen years ago. She threatens to take all of that back if he doesn’t call at least once a week. She cries all the way through the disjointed speech.

He puts his arms around her like she is the child, and reassures her that she won’t be forgotten.

Her husband, towering over the two of them at 6’2” (unfortunately Levi has remained at a steady 5’4” in this lifetime, an inch taller than before but still short nonetheless) just smiles affectionately at him and tells him to stay safe and continue to work hard.

He never admits to his parents that the reason he leaves for California isn’t because of the amazing History program he was accepted into, but because he was lured in by the pictures of the glittering sea, of tanned stock photo human beings stepping through the sand, all tanned skin and bright eyes.

 _It’s a start_ , he thinks.

If he could find Erwin in this world just by getting in a fight at school, he may just find a boy who may or may not have deep green eyes and a knack for emotional outbursts traipsing along a beach in southern California.

He isn’t going to knock Fate just yet.

He thinks his odds are pretty good this time around.

\---

Four years go by as quickly as the seventeen he has spent up until that point in this new body, and they are accompanied by a restlessness he did not experience living at home with his parents.

Though he tries to enjoy himself in his college years, he finds that with each new person he meets, an anguish that it is not _the_ person he wants to meet washes over him. More than anything—more than graduating, more than dating, more than planning for the future—he finds himself wanting to find Eren Yeager, to explain his actions, and to apologize.

Of course, there are too many variables for this to be a solvable issue.

For one, judging by the age difference between Eric-not-Erwin and himself, Eren could have either died already from old age, not have been born yet, or somewhere in between those two points. Levi didn’t like to dwell on this idea, preferring to think he met this world’s Erwin for a reason (the “thank-you” had lifted some of the guilt rooted in the heart of this body, at least), and that the same would apply to his chance meeting with Eren.

The other issue was the whole “Where in the world is Eren Yeager?” thing. Levi had traveled much when he was younger, since Amelia and Markus were in pretty high demand for lectures and the like. Nevertheless, even though he had kept his eyes peeled, he’d never met a person who even remotely reminded him of the boy in Germany, France, Austria, Poland, England, or any of the other countries he had visited. He certainly hadn’t experienced the overwhelming wave of memories that had accompanied his meeting with Erwin.

So, Levi spent most of his free time (what little there was of it when he was not in class, studying, playing the flute in the school’s orchestra, fencing, and running on the track team) mapping out next steps: places he would search, clues that may help him find the Eren Yeager of this world.

He found himself slipping back into Levi Ackerman’s habit of sleeping for but three hours a night, lying back in his leather computer chair and awakening in a world of monsters and human nature and a mere boy caught between it all.

The bags under his eyes multiplied quickly within his first few years of college, and his aura of unapproachability grew.

(It didn’t help that the first party he went to was a beach party, and he had a panic attack the moment the waves licked at his heels. He eventually came to, panting, a pretty brunette eying him with worry. All he could think about was the way that red permeated the blue when the waves carried the boy with green eyes away, away, away.)

By the time he graduates college, Levi is left with a degree and a deep-rooted disappointment—in his inability to find any hints to where Eren may be, in his own unwillingness to make a decision regarding his future career, and in the terrible feeling of being caught between two indecipherable lives.

_Which one is the real one, huh? Which one matters the most?_

He constantly finds himself frustrated and unable to come up with the answer to these questions.

At the urging of his college adviser, he had gained a certification to teach, and began a job search with little enthusiasm a few months after graduation.

He has a small apartment a few minutes’ drive away from the water, but the beach isn’t as beautiful as the pictures, and he still can’t find it in himself to approach it again

 _Corporal Levi, Humanity’s Strongest, afraid of a little bit of water,_ he thinks with a great deal of self-deprecation as he sets a mug of tea down by his computer.

It is a Tuesday morning, and he is home with nothing to do, having cleaned his apartment until it was sparkling the day before.

He had been on various school websites all morning, looking for an opening for a History teacher (he may as well do what he knew how to do best, he had figured after countless hours spent angsting over what the hell he should even do for a career this time around, since killing giants wasn’t really a viable option).

Half of a muffin awaited him on a plate next to his mouse, and he stuffed it into his mouth before deciding that he would search for just twenty minutes more before quitting for the day.

One opening catches his eye approximately fifteen minute of scrolling later; a private school in northern California was looking for an AP European History teacher. The description of the opening is relatively bare, but he noticed on the website that they had many highly ranked sports teams—track, basketball, football, water polo, fencing, you name it. When he clicks on the fencing website, it states that the current coach, a Mr. Lee, was leaving to return to China to care for his sick father. As it was, Mr. Lee had been the AP European History teacher.

“Huh.” Levi says, his mouth still full of muffin.

Thirty minutes later, he has submitted a cover letter, a resume, and all the necessary materials regarding his certification. He is called an hour later to schedule a phone interview for the next day, the first time he has heard back from any of the jobs he has applied to.

\---

The next week, he finds himself on an airplane, a strange excitement making his chest its new home.

 _This time_ , he thinks. _This time for sure_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope it was enjoyable! Also, this is completely self-edited, so I apologize for any mistakes. Let me know if you find any and I will go back and fix them. Have a lovely weekend!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A wild Eren has appeared!

“—and then on Wednesday, the schedule changes, see? That added twenty minutes is for student reading time. You can use it as some extra prep time, or you can read yourself. It’s always good to model for the students!”

The red-haired school secretary leading him through the hallways is a little too enthusiastic for Levi’s tastes (especially at 9 A.M.), but he figures that it’s better to work for people who actually care about what they’re doing than for those without passion.

The last week had gone by far too quickly. Levi was currently living in a mid-range hotel on his parents’ dime while he searched for an apartment. He had spent most of the week holed up either indoors or in a café down the street reading through the textbook the former teacher had used in his class and brainstorming some other materials he could bring in for his students. The way Levi saw it, the less he actually had to talk, the better. He had never been a very eloquent speaker; luckily, he’d gotten away with it most of his life by deferring to others who were more charming.

The woman continues to talk, and Levi gives a few polite nods here and there in an attempt to look like he is listening.

“Mr. Hunter is the head of the History department here, so you’ll have to speak to him if you want to approve field trips or other deviations from the standard curriculum,” she continues, swiping a lock of hair out of her eye and pausing for a moment to look up at him (it’s amazing she’s shorter than him; he feels strangely triumphant). “He’ll be your best bet in the way of a mentor. He’s a great guy; really inspires his students to work hard and reach their full potential. He does have a bit of a temper, though,” the woman laughs a little nervously. Levi just stares at her blankly in response. She blushes a bit, perhaps feeling self-conscious because of his serious gaze.

“Anyway, he’s in Room 104. You’ll be meeting with him after the morning session that’s with just the new staff, actually. Then, in the afternoon, we’ll have the entire staff for the final part of the PD. You brought a lunch, right?”

\---

The meeting with the new staff was as boring as Levi had assumed it would be, full of test score statistics, basic school regulations (don’t touch the kids, don’t piss off the parents, don’t hog the staff fridge), and a variety of rather banal ice-breaking exercises. The principal seemed nice enough, albeit a little distracted; he was apparently flying out to the Midwest later that day for a conference.

Levi left with a sheet full of poorly drawn doodles and a grumbling stomach. He had most certainly not packed a lunch. When he had said as much, the secretary, Mrs. Patton, had given him such a look of despair that he had thought she had been personally offended by his reply. She had offered him some roasted potatoes from her own lunch, but Levi told her it was fine, that he’d run across the street to a deli or something after his meeting with the other History teacher. It had taken some convincing, but eventually she left him alone.

Room 104 is on the first floor of the building. The door is closed, and there is no window to peer through to the inside like some of the classrooms in the school have. A poster on said door confirmed to Levi that the classroom was indeed Mr. Hunter’s:

_FROM THE MOMENT WE ARE BORN,_

_ALL OF US ARE FREE._

_WELCOME TO MR. HUNTER’S_

_HISTORY CLASSROOM!_

Levi frowns at the text. It seems like a stupid, cliché saying to put on the door to an AP US History classroom, but he supposes that corny history teachers are not an uncommon occurrence in this world. A brief image of his parents flashes before his eyes, and he tries to ignore the feeling of loneliness that flits through his being.

His stomach grumbles again, breaking his train of thought. _Might as well get this over with as quickly as possible_ , he thinks.

He opens the door slowly and peers inside the room.

At the back left corner of the room, a fairly tall man is hanging something above the wall-length whiteboard. His brown hair is tousled, and his shirt is halfway untucked from his pants, which look to be a bit too short for the man in the first place. Levi glances down at the man’s ankles, and resists the urge to raise an eyebrow when he sees that the man is wearing bright yellow socks covered in tiny green fir trees.

 _How slovenly_ , he thinks with disappointment.

Levi waits a moment, then clears his throat to announce his presence.

“Hi. Sorry to interrupt. I’m Levi. The new history teacher.”

“Ah, right! AP European, right? Too bad about Mr. Lee.” The man continues to hang decorations, unfazed by Levi’s entrance. “Just a sec, sorry about this. I’m a massive klutz, so if I stop now, I’ll probably fall. Believe me, it’s happened before. Right on my face. I think it was my second year. I swear, the real way to do this is to blackmail a bunch of your friends into helping out. Setting up a class by yourself _sucks_. I’ve done this for eight years and it’s still just as irritating as it was the first time I did it, ya know?”

The man stops speaking long enough to snap the poster to the wall with four quick staples, then carefully steps down from the stool he had been using. His arms crossed, he steps back to admire his own work. After making a noise of satisfaction, he turns around, suddenly facing Levi.

A cold shiver makes its way down Levi’s spine as he is met with a flash of bright green.

 _Oh_ , he thinks.

“See?” The man glances at his watch, barely having looked at Levi. “It’s almost one o’clock, and all I’ve done is hang a few posters. I haven’t even gotten to seating charts yet. Seriously, we’re all just slaves to the system. Whoa, you okay? I didn’t mean to scare you.”

The man laughs nervously, looking down at Levi.

Before he knows it, Levi is clutching a desk, halfway on his way to the floor. He watches his knuckles turn white, not yet ready for a second glance at the figure before him.

He isn’t hungry anymore, that's for sure.

Standing in front of him with a concerned, bemused expression on his face is Eren Yeager.

Sure, he is older than the boy had been when he had breathed his last, hands clutching Levi’s own, but the features are exactly the same. It is as if he had aged, becoming all angles and wizened eyes, then stepped out of Levi’s dreams of the past into the present day.

For all the planning, all the longing, all the hope gained and then lost, Levi hasn’t any idea how to react.

He’d always _known_ , of course, that Eren was out there. After all, he had found Erwin just fine, and he’d even caught glimpses of some of the other members of the Survey Corps—on the streets, or while watching the news.

He had no trouble coming to terms with the idea that he’d spent his whole life up until this point waiting to meet Eren again, with but one goal in mind: to apologize for his actions, and to devote himself to making sure that Eren achieved the happy life he very obviously deserved.

“What was it—Mr. Kurtz? You okay? I think the nurse is here for PD as well, I can call her—”

He hadn’t even _entertained_ the thought that Eren wouldn’t remember him. With everyone else, he had physically swooned as a wave of memories had hit him; he assumed it was the same for the others as well. Though Erwin had said that his reactions were less _physical_ than Levi’s seemed to be (Erwin was as poised in this world as he was in the last), he did admit that it was usually a shock to his system and left him with unbearable headaches.

But to this Eren, it was clear that Levi is just some guy having a panic attack in a high school history classroom.

His mouth dry, Levi glances up at the other man.

“Sorry. Just…a dizzy spell. Haven’t eaten yet,” he adds a little forced laugh at the end, attempting to blame his shock on hunger

Eren-not-Eren frowns. “Oh no! Well, I always keep some extra food in my mini fridge. Just stocked up on microwave meals. I have some ramen in a drawer somewhere, too—I usually stay in with students at lunch, they like to chat and occasionally ask for some more help…I’m getting way ahead of myself. Sorry, I’m a real mess today. My name is Eren Hunter. And, no, it’s not A-A-R-O-N or E-R-I-N, it’s E-R-E-N. It’s always tough for people. I think it’s Turkish, or something. To be honest, I don’t really know, ‘cause I was adopted. The English teachers have the most trouble with it, for some reason,” Eren said, with a grimace.

He brightens again almost immediately. “Anyway, Levi, right? Like the jeans?”

Levi can’t bring himself to tear his gaze away from Eren’s eyes. He hadn’t imagined it after all. They are just as stunning as they had been before, deep blues and greens in perfect harmony. He shakes his head, trying to will himself not to look anymore.

 _They aren’t going to follow you like they used to, so stop expecting it, you selfish asshat_ , he scolds himself.

“My parents named me after the book by Hobbes. It was a shitty idea, but they got a kick out of it,” Levi says, clearing his throat awkwardly.

“’And Beasts that have Deliberation, must necessarily also have Will,’” Eren says after a beat, grinning.

Levi blinks.

Eren laughs (a childish chiming that sends a pang straight to Levi’s chest) and raises his right arm to rub the back of his neck sheepishly. “It’s my favorite quote from _Leviathan_. I don’t know, something about it just clicks.”

“You were adopted?” Levi finds himself asking belatedly, then realizes what an incredibly odd jump in topics of conversation it is from discussing Hobbes, and how inappropriate it is for him to press this stranger for such intimate personal details.

_What, are you going to ask for his Social Security Number next, you moron?_

Eren just smiles, as if the question is entirely acceptable. “Yeah, my parents actually found me in an alley. The joke is that they thought I’d have superpowers or something, because it’s such a comic book trope. Instead, they just got an angry dork.” The man laughs a little bit at his own words.

“I was adopted, too,” Levi finds himself saying seriously. “My parents found me walking around while they were on a trip to England. I don’t remember anything in my life before that point.”

Eren looks at him curiously, still wearing that small smile, even though it seemed to falter at his words.

“Small world,” he says slowly, and Levi feels that the atmosphere has suddenly turned uncomfortable.

“A-anyway, it’s okay about the food. I’m just going to run across the street to the deli and grab a sandwich,” Levi says, suddenly anxious to get out, to be anywhere but in that room with this Eren, this older Eren, this stranger with the visage of a boy he had once sworn to protect but had ended up betraying. “I just wanted to introduce myself. I, uh, don’t really have anything to contribute about my curriculum yet, so.”

Levi couldn’t remember ever crying in his past life; he had to be the beacon of hope, the stronghold against chaos and despair. In this lifetime, he could only remember crying once. His mother had been in a car crash one day while he was in elementary school. His father had come to pick him up at school, and he had ridden stony-faced in the car while they travelled to the hospital.

When they had opened the door to her room, Levi was reminded terribly of that moment when Petra’s father had told him how proud she was to have been under his command, not knowing she had already lost her life.

His face retained that same stony, stupefied expression, and he braced himself for the worst.

Instead, he had been greeted by his mother’s bright smile and an outstretched arm—the other was snugly wrapped in a pristine cast. “It’s just her arm,” her father had mumbled; he had said nothing on the car ride over, and Levi knew then that it had been because he was upset she was hurt at all, not because the injury was awful.

He had felt himself fly into her arm, and she chuckled tiredly as he buried himself into her chest.

“Levi,” she had said, pulling him away from her to get a good look at him. After catching wind of his expression, she frowned.

“You’re allowed to cry, you know. Sometimes things are overwhelming, and it’s better to let them out than let them stay inside. You can _especially_ feel free to cry in front of people who love you.”

Then, he had remembered Eren’s tears as he plunged his sword into him and the accompanying phrase:

_“Thank you.”_

Now, that same moment replays in his head, but it’s wrong, all wrong, because is this even Eren if he is not _the_ Eren who had sworn to defend humanity as part of the Survey Corps?

He cannot apologize to this Eren.

Levi had always been so sure he’d been given a beating heart a second time for a purpose. Now, it felt like he’d spent his whole life following a single path only to reach a dead end.

As soon as he feels his eyes watering, Levi gives a short nod and turns to make his getaway.

He cannot cry in front of this Eren.

“Nice to meet you, Eren,” he mumbles with his back turned as he pushes the door behind him closed.

Eren does not call out after him.

Why should he?

Trying to ignore how disgusting it must be, Levi throws open the door to a boy’s restroom and slams the door shut behind him. He slides down against the locked door and buries his head in his hands.

Needless to say, he doesn’t eat lunch that day.


End file.
